A Life Reflected
by Jinxed-Wood
Summary: Torchwood/SG-1 - Torchwood gets an unexpected visitor... Vala Mal Doran


**Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the Beeb, Stargate belongs to MGM, all I have is my Microsoft Word.**

* * *

Jack knew something was up the minute he entered the hub. He usually found Tosh's complete inability to lie with her body language endearing…usually.

"I've got Bagels and sticky buns," he announced aloud, rattling the paper bag. He looked up at the mezzanine, and caught Ianto glancing away quickly.

Guilty.

"Okay, spill it," he said. "And you guys really need to work on your poker faces, by the way. They're embarrassing." He watched as Ianto and Gwen gave each other a significant look. He hated it when they did that, it meant they were going to _manage_ him.

"I think, perhaps, you may need to see this in person," Ianto said.

"Oh, yes, definitely," Gwen piped up, at a nudge from her partner in crime. "It's very important that you get to see this...uh... face to face because, you know, you need to get a good _feel _for this particular problem."

"Very important," Ianto echoed.

"_Right,_" Jack said, as he looked over Ianto's shoulder. He eyed Owen, who was suddenly studiously misting his plants. Tosh had resorted to hiding her face behind her monitor. "How about we start this conversation again…_what the hell has happened?_."

* * *

"I don't understand how it happened," Tosh said, worriedly. "All the security protocols were in place, none of them were tampered with, but all of a sudden—" She took a breath. "I took readings, but they're all over the place…and most of them are physically impossible. I mean, look at this one, it breaks at least _two_ Einsteinian principles!"

"Someone broke an Einsteinian principle? Around here?" Jack drawled. "Fancy that." His eyes narrowed. The readings looked familiar, as if there were something he should recognise, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He sighed, and looked at the other screen, the one piped into the surveillance camera in the cells below. "And our guest?"

"When we went down to investigate, we heard this thumping from inside one of the storage lockers," Gwen supplied. "And no, she isn't on the storage manifest."

"What do the preliminary tests show?" Jack asked.

"She's human…mostly," Owen said. "They are some disturbing anomalies in her blood work, and she's just…just…" Owen waved his hand in the air. "I give up, somebody else can do the explaining."

"She's very…" Gwen pulled an awkward face. "Forward?"

Jack tried to keep the smirk from his face. He knew exactly what the expression on Gwen's face meant. "Ianto?" he asked.

"She's not from around here," Ianto said bluntly. "She has the look."

"What look?" Jack said absently, as he examined the figure on the screen. Dark hair, slim, attractive, bored with the prison cell…

"The look _you _get," Tosh said quietly. "The one that says she knows something we don't, but she's a good sport, so she'll play along for a while."

"I see," Jack drawled. So that's what they thought of him, interesting. "Well, let's go and meet our good sport before she decides she's bored."

* * *

She slouched elegantly against the prison wall, one leather clad leg propped up on the barren bed, the other lolling over the side. "You _do_ realise your interrogation technique could do with a little work," she drawled, flashing him a meaningless smile as she saluted him with her tea mug.

"Is that so?" Jack said.

"Oh, quite definitely," she said, as she slowly stood. "Don't get me wrong - the damp grey walls, the barely there living essentials, it's all very ominous…but the cup of tea kind of gives the game away."

Jack's eyes wandered to Ianto, who shrugged. He covered his sigh with a meaningless smile of his own. "Listen, as much as I appreciate the banter, can we cut to the chase? I'm on a tight schedule here."

"But of course," she said. "It's obviously just a small misunderstanding, anyway. So why don't you use that little red phone, or whatever you use on this part of the planet, and call up your ruler. Tell them I'm a member of SG-1… that should open a few doors."

"SG-1?" Jack echoed. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"Oh please," she sighed. "Do we really have to do this? It's obvious that you're well aware of extra terrestrial events; the technology in your facility has already given the game away. Clearly, you're some sort of British equivalent of the NSA, and you've definitely been holding out on them, because if that wasn't a rift manipulator I saw earlier, in your main quarters, then I'm a Jaffa warrior – not that I can't appreciate why you'd want to keep that to yourself," she added hastily. "Tell you what, why don't you let me out of here, quiet as a mouse, and I'll pretend this little incident didn't happen. We wouldn't want to cause a international incident, would we?" She stopped, and looked at this face. "You have no idea of what I'm talking about, do you?" she said.

Jack grinned widely. "Not a clue."

"Not even an inkling?" she said. "Oh, come _on_, I know your Earth governments types like to play hide the Stargate, every once in a while, but… oh no, don't do this to me. I hate it when this happens." She slammed her hands against the glass. "Tell me," she said. "If I mentioned - randomly, let's say – a great big ring with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, you would say…?"

"That if you were looking for the British museum, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere?" Jack said. "But that's not the answer you were looking for, was it?"

"Oh no, no it wasn't," she pronounced. "And I'm going to kill him. I'm going to strangle him slowly and painfully, and then force feed him green jello for a _week_."

"He? Who's he?" Gwen piped up.

"_He_ is a jumped up archaeologist with a very limited lifespan, that's who he is," she grumbled.

"And you are…?" Jack prompted.

"Oh, sorry, didn't I mention it? I am Vala Mal Doran and, in case you haven't already guessed it. I'm not from around here – I don't suppose you've any doughnuts to go with this tea, by any chance, I'm absolutely starved."."

"We've got sticky buns?" Ianto offered.

Vala smirked. "Oh yes, that'll do nicely."

* * *

"So, basically you go around hunting down aliens and nicking their technology?" Vala asked lightly as she licked the sugar off her fingers. "And then you lock up the both of them…not very forward thinking of you, is it? I mean, who knows what some of that tech may do? A dimensional mirror may be the least of your problems."

"Listen, we've already told you, we don't have an inter-dimensional mirror," Owen said, exasperated.

"I wish you'd stop saying that," Vala said. "I'm here, am I not? Therefore, it stands to reason that that blasted device is around here somewhere. Let's start with that glorified metal casket I found myself in, when I first arrived."

"Tell me, does the name Alice ring a bell?" Ianto drawled.

"It this another one of those cultural references?" She caught the look on Jack's face. "Look, all I know is that the device was pretty and Ancient, and Daniel had promised it had been deactivated. The next thing I knew, my hand had slipped through its surface like butter and I found myself here. It's not as if that sort of thing happens to me every day, you know...well, maybe every second or third—" she paused, the blood draining from her face. "I think we may need to hurry this up," she said, her voice strained, and then her face seemed to bleed and blur, her form twisting this way and that. It looked like an optical illusion, done with a carnival mirror. She screamed, and Jack winced, grabbing her as she fell to the floor, her form now normal again.

"Well, _that_ wasn't pleasant," she panted.

"What the hell was that?" Jack barked.

"One too many of us in this universe, I think," Vala breathed out. "Somewhere out there, there's another me, and I'm stepping on her toes. I've read about this happening in one of the mission files. It's going to get worse." She stumbled to her feet. "Where is that bloody mirror!"

* * *

They stared at the seemingly solid chunk of stone.

"That," Owen said. "Is _not _a mirror."

"Well, you weren't really expecting to see a piece of silver backed glass, were you?" Vala challenged, as she hunted around in the small crate beside it.

"What are looking for?" Jack asked.

"The key, of course," Vala said absently. "It should be here somewhere….ah!"

Owen squinted at the small device in her hand. "What does it do?" he asks.

"It turns it on," Vala said, bouncing to her feet, and inserting it into a depression in the stone slab. The sheer side suddenly melted away, revealing a sandy beach.

"Okay," Ianto said. "That is kind of wonderful...and very scary"

"That's pretty much Ancient technology in a nut shell," Vala agreed, as she tweaked with the controller device. "Ah, here we go…" The image blurred again, and Jack leaned forward, as he found himself looking at a mirror image of Torchwood. It was exactly the same, except for—

Jack felt as if someone had punched him in the gut, as Suzie leaned down and peered at him. A puzzle frown graced her face.

"_Jack?_" she mouthed.

"Oh, great, no sound on this thing," Vala grumbled. "Well, she wasn't in the underground storage facility when we were there, and I don't see Daniel, so—"

Before he could stop her, she turned the control device again, and Suzie disappeared. He didn't know whether he should be angry or relieved.

"You okay?" Gwen asked him softly.

Jack nodded briefly, before turning to Vala. "How long do you think this will take?" he asked.

"Well, theoretically there are an infinite variety of parallel worlds so… oh, not that one."

A desert of ash, and an angry red sky filled the mirror, and Jack felt his mouth do dry as he recognised the ship in the sky. Daleks. "No, not that one," he agreed quietly, as Vala kept on experimenting with the controller.

The mirror cleared again, and Vala let out a breath of relief, "At last, Daniel!" The guy on other side of the mirror - kinda cute - leaned down and looked through the mirror; he was dressed, head to toe, in black leather, and his eyes began to glow. "Oh! Wrong Daniel!" Vala hastily turned the dial.

"Care to explain what _that_ was all about?" Jack drawled.

"Goa'uld, a parasitic alien race that take over the bodies of their hosts and enslave entire worlds – not the sort of person you'd want wandering around your dimension, trust me on this. " She shuddered, and Jack let the matter drop. He knew personal experience when he heard it.

The image on the mirror coalesced once more, and it was the same guy, this time dressed in casual clothing and an ID tag. He leaned down, and then frowned through the mirror. "_Vala?_" he asked, soundlessly.

Vala sighed. "Wrong one," she said, at the guy in the mirror.

He seemed to understand, because he nodded. "_Good luck_," he said.

"You too," Vala said, and turned the dial again.

"How can you be so sure it wasn't your Daniel?" Gwen asked softly.

"The ID tag," Vala said. "It called him Colonel. My Daniel is a civilian…oh, wait…"

The mirror settled, and there he was again. Jack noted that this time the tag said Doctor.

"Is this the one?" he asked.

"Wait…wait…" Vala watched the mirror, a smirk growing on her face, as the guy in the mirror got more and more annoyed, pointing at his watch, and waving what looked like a schedule sheet at her. Jack couldn't follow exactly what he was saying; something about an expense account and some guy, called Mitchell, foaming at the mouth. "Yup, that's him," Vala eventually said. "Only _he_ could get that pissy about such a small, little thing."

"Small, little thing?" Jack echoed, with a drawl.

"Well, what's a credit card or two between friends," she chirped happily.

"Uh, fraud and theft, actually," Ianto piped up.

Her smile grew wider. "Is it now?" she asked smugly. "Well, goodbye, thanks for all the tea…oh, and I'd turn this thing off, if I were you. You wouldn't want any unexpected visitors." And she stepped though the mirror.

Jack grinned widely, as he watched the man get even more irritated, and then flail a little, as she threw her arms around him. "Well, that looks like an interesting relationship," he said, as he reached for the control stone. "And that's that—"

The control stone wouldn't budge, and Jack eyed the mirror nervously as the image began to blur. Vala peered through the mirror once more, but this time she was dressed in black leather, and had an alien woman, with grey skin and great curves, standing beside her. Neither of them looked happy to see him, and they were already reaching for their weapons as he reached for the dial.

"Ianto!" he barked. "Remember those names Vala used?"

"Already on it," Ianto said, as he ran to his desk.

The mirror changed again, and Jack froze as a figure looked through.

"_Jack?_" she said, a smile blossoming on her face.

"Who's that," Gwen asked quietly.

"That, Gwen," Jack said hoarsely. "Would be Rose Tyler

**FINIS**


End file.
